Fear and Leadership

    It is early April of 2011.  Just when we start to see signs of some increasing vitality in the economic recovery, the headlines are dominated by three "downer" stories:  the situation in Libya, the situation in Japan, the situation with our national political leaders posturing and haggling over the budget.  Not a pretty picture.
So the challenges will continue for quite some time for all of us who are in leadership positions. 
   Today I want to speak to one challenge in particular.  Fear.  The fear that arises in every sane leader
at times like these.  To not feel at least a bit of fear is something less than human.  On the other hand, to allow it to overwhelm you, to invade your decision-making process, no less the energy and attitude you bring to your teams every day--well, that is courting disaster.  But it is never easy to manage fear within us.  Fear arises from deep within the human brain, in the limbic system and the brainstem.  These structures have been
around for literally hundreds of millions of years, beginning with the lowly lizard and diversifying and developing up the evolutionary chain into mammals and ultimately primates.  They are designed, among other things, to keep us safe.  Our fear reactions tend to be lightning fast and overwhelming...for a good reason.  They are supposed to mobilize our entire physiological system to fight or flee.  You don't successfully defend your life against a mortal threat without engaging every atom in your body and mind .  These structures vastly pre-date the rise of civilization and workplace societies such as we have today.  The neocortex, the "new brain" that overlays these earlier-developing structures, is often no match for their power and urgency.
   Nonetheless, if we have chosen to be leaders, we owe it to ourselves, our people and all our stakeholders to stretch our mental and emotional muscles to achieve a measure of calm in order to make good decisions.
It's completely ok to freak-out in the privacy of your home and car.  It's not only ok, but probably wise to let
yourself go (again, in privacy) from time to time when the pressure builds.  Real men, and women, real grownups do cry in the face of such challenges.  They do get triggered into rage against the deeper feeling of helplessness that can strike in the face of constant, grinding challenges.  So this is a matter of choosing the appropriate place to let that tension out.  Crying is a great stress reliever, usually more so than pounding the hell out of a pillow, although that may be necessary as well. 
   But when we walk into our professional lives, we've got to be the grownup in the room in order to bring a measure of modulation to those around us who may be peaking in their fear or sense of helplessness.  This does NOT mean putting on a game face.  It means you drained off some of your own energy before you got to work and you are authentically in a better space.  Fear can be useful when it isn't overwhelming.  It informs us of danger and we should listen to it.  But if it is the only voice in the room, we will usually make poor quality decisions.  So, by all means, take into account the energy from that feeling.  Allow it to make your mind all the sharper and your heart more attuned to those around you.  There may be times when it calls you to significantly alter your strategy.  In the depths of the Recession, a lot of us had to do that and it was
largely appropriate.  However, there is a rising tide now, albeit, it is rising too slowly for most of us.
Still, if you developed a new strategy for your organization in the depths of the Recession and you have been sticking with it, it's probably best you continue to do that. 
   My mentor, Dr. W. Edwards Deming gave us a phrase I consider one of the most beautiful in any language:  constancy of purpose.  He coached us not to tinker and tamper every time we get a number we don't like but to make sure we are looking at the big picture, measuring the big picture...and staying the course, unless credible trends call us to make a shift.  More often than not, though, what we're being called to is another thing he named well:  continuous improvement.  Stick with your strategy and keep improving it day by day.  Foster an environment of truth-telling on all levels of the organization so the best ideas are regularly percolating upwards to the decision-makers.  Foster an environment where people feel safe to try things, to fail and to learn from those failures and apply those lessons in a timely manner to keep driving improvements. 
  Lead from a perspective that serves the greater good, just as you did in better times, but with more collaborative attunement to the dangers at hand.  If you can do this, if you can let yourself feel the depth of your fear in private and use it as one voice in the room in public, while fully engaging your team, you're likely to look back on this time three to five years from now as one when your mettle and your metal as a leader
were both proven.
C2011 Bob Kamm